We're back after a little break! This time, Nora Young talks about this New York Times profile of author, Philip Pullman. In particular, she looks at his very specific rituals around writing. Nora and Cathi talk about journaling and their own rituals for writing. Nora's preferred method: pomodoro!
Cathi Bond looks at a study on the benefits of fasting, in particular, 5 days of 'regular' eating a week, and 2 days of extremely limited calorie intake (via New Atlas).
Do you have rituals to get in the mood to work? Have you tried fasting, and if so, have you seen any benefits? Let us know!
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This time, Cathi Bond talks about a study testing the effectiveness of different virtual reality scenarios in managing pain. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a virtual reality scene at a calming beach was much more effective in pain relief, than one that was simply a distracting urban scene (via Medgadget)

Cathi is a fan of "tap and pay" credit cards. But now she's wondering if they're really secure. She also mentions this security report about malware on phones installed somewhere along the supply chain.

Nora looks at Kerv, a cool-looking ring that gives you the ability for contactless payment without a card, or a phone, at all (via Tech Radar).

In this podcast, Cathi Bond talks about architect Vincent Callebaut's cool, sustainable, luxury condo project. Will this be the way of the future for condos that aren't on the luxury end too? See more of Callebaut's projects here.

Nora Young talks about new research suggesting just how good - and fast - humans are at visually distinguishing reality from unreal images. What does this mean for virtual reality design, as well as the design of robots?

In this podcast, Cathi Bond talks about Continuum Infinitum, a supercool continuous video loop (via Gizmodo). Watch the video here. She also mentions Snarg. Cathi and Nora talk internet art. What do you think defines it? Nora mentions Grocery Trip, and the work of Darius Kazemi.

Meanwhile, Nora Young talks about this Fast Company article by Veronique Lafargue on how the folks at Google brainstorm. Some of it is familiar (eg, don't shoot down ideas), but some is really new: in particular, don't follow up brainstorming with more meetings. Instead, go straight to prototype!

On this podcast, Cathi Bond talks about a soft, lightweight "exosuit" created by the Wyss Institute at Harvard, and ReWalk Robotics (via Gizmag). Unlike other experiments in exoskeletons designed for people who can't move their legs, this is a support for people with some mobility impairment. Nora mentions this segment on her show, Spark.

Meanwhile, Nora Young talks about Smart Slab, a design for a 'smart' table that offers heating, cooling, and device charging. In addition to being great looking, it's the kind of design Nora and Cathi think we could see a lot more of in our connected future (check out the pictures via Core77)

Nora Young talks about new research into creating an AI that can read and 'understand' a news article with greater accuracy than Google's DeepMind had previously been able to do (via New Scientist). What does it mean for the future, now that AI is getting so good at recognizing and interpreting text, images, faces, and speech?

Cathi Bond continues on the artificial intelligence tip with research out of Stanford into robots that can navigate pedestrian sidewalks, where we chaotic humans can behave in unexpected ways (via Gizmag). The Jackrabbot, as it's called, is even cute!